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Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Mantis

The Mantis

C.
Richard Patton

It was at the moment of my
own death that I first saw the mantis. I was lying flat on my back. I could
feel the wetness spreading up my left side, soaking through my t-shirt. The
wetness was blood of course – my own blood. My wife came into my mind then: her
blonde hair long and curled trailing behind her and still plenty more of it to
frame her round, busy face. My ex-wife,
I still had to correct myself.She
wouldn’t be coming out here to the garage to find me.She wasn’t asleep in our bed, as she would
have been a year ago.Closer to two
years now, I guessed, but I was really in no shape to do the math.

I was shot, I knew
that.Shot in my own suburban garage in
the middle of the night. No wife living with me. There were no children asleep
in the upstairs bedrooms, either.How
old would they be?Seven, and five,
maybe, if I had let us have them. I had regretted that at times.Did I regret it now?They would be losing a Dad, but I would have
a legacy. Naw, no deathbed regrets.I
always knew what avoiding kids meant.It
was a trade-off: less responsibility for lesser joys; more personal freedom for
less personal depth.Less expense, too:
I was free to buy that two thousand dollar road bicycle that had been hanging
on the garage wall.Is this how it
happens? Is this how your life is reviewed before your death, not as a fast
forwarded movie trailer filled with the highlights but as a set of obscure
random snapshots, each flashed for an instant before your mind?

The expensive bike was gone,
stolen by a thief in the night – a noisy bicycle thief in the night.Noisy, and armed. If only he had been a quiet
low-life-scumbag, bike-stealing-bastard thief-in-the-night; then I would still
be asleep in my bed, just with no more bicycle hanging in my garage.

My chest didn’t hurt, but my
head sure did.I must have bounced it on
the concrete floor when I fell.I sensed
that I couldn’t move.I knew I was alone
here. I knew I was in trouble, dying. My eyes focused on the bright bare curly
cue light bulb in its simple socket against the unpainted plasterboard ceiling
above me.More random thoughts: the bulb
should last 10 years, the package had said.I only had about 10 more seconds, I guessed. That’s when I noticed the largest
one of the insects that had gathered on the ceiling, around the curly cue light
bulb.The other insects were all smaller:
several plain brown moths, a couple of June bugs and some little flies or gnats
that were just fading dark spots to me, some moving, most not; but then there
was this big bug, imprinting its image on my brain as I closed my eyes. He was long,
six or eight inches; slender, and green, and praying for me.

~ ~
~

_______________________

Bio: C. Richard Patton writes with the Green Room Writing Group at 16 Main Gallery in Madison, Alabama. He has lived in Madison for 17 of the past 21 years. Alabama is his third southern state, living previously in Virginia and North Carolina. His poetry has appeared in "The Valley Planet" (Huntsville, AL) and "The Grains of Sand" (Raleigh, NC). He has recently turned his focus to fiction with a speculative
bent.

The day "Claire" from Lost mentioned me!

Pat Says:

Pat Conroy just told me that I take a foul art and give it a queenly air, then he kissed my hand.

Decatur Book Festival, 2014

Books that "Stuck"

In no particular order: Bill Bryson and James Herriot....I have re-read anything they write multiple times.We're All DamagedThe End of the World Running ClubHandmaid's Tale Watership DownRiversDesperation RoadBull Mountain The Stand The Poisonwood Bible Black Beauty The Road... read once, will never read again, but it stuck. Lonesome Dove Gone With The Wind....of course Earth Abides A Brave New World

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“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” —Louisa May Alcott